Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Traffic management: Lessons from Singapore

Traffic woes: City police looking to Singapore for answers
Home Minister V S Acharya told reporters here on Monday that the training programme will be held for one month. The dates of thetraining schedule are yet to be finalised, he said. Basically,Singapore was zeroed in for its size, population and traffic densityare similar to Bangalore.Acharya said, the team will study broadly the information system inplace in Singapore wherein motorists are alerted about the trafficdensity on nearby-by roads through a public display system. This helpsmotorists avoid already jammed roads. The team will also study thetoll system in place in central district of the city during peakhours. Singapore was the first city in the world to implement anelectronic road toll collection system for purpose of 'congestionpricing'.Under this system users of a transport network have to pay a toll forusing roads in periods of peak demand. This system was furtherenhanced to Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) in 1998. It is mandatory forall Singaporean vehicles to be fitted with a stored-value card -referred in the country as In-vehicle Unit (IU)- if they wish to usethe toll roads. The same is affixed on the lower right corner of thefront wind screen within sight of the driver. When a vehicle equippedwith an IU passes under an ERP sensor - installed on all toll roads -a road usage charge is deducted from the card.

6 comments:

Shrinidhi Hande said...

One side, an army of 150 MLAs lobbying for US VISA, (Ref: Vijaya karnataka, 17th Aug 2008-Any comments on that?) here you're taking another battalion to Singapore...

I don't know what to comment

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir,

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/aug/19spec.htm

Please check this article....this is not criticize our Bangalore Police.

What our Bangalore Police is doing all these days after the blast, which is considered as the second best after Delhi Police?

Anonymous said...

Sir,
I donot understand sending people to Singapore to "learn" when they cannot "implement" their learnings.
Enforcement is at an all time low in Bangalore when comes to traffic. Please drive in city without your official car, and without prior intimation to police about your movements, and you will learn.
People jump signals, park in middle of road, and police just dont bother. What are they going to learn in Singapore?
First they need to learn how to implement existing laws, and then they need to go and learn new things.

Anonymous said...

Continuation to my previous post.

In reference to this point in article

"Acharya said, the team will study broadly the information system inplace in Singapore wherein motorists are alerted about the trafficdensity on nearby-by roads through a public display system"

Today, after heavy rain, I wanted to check which is the best way to take depending on traffic, and I checked http://btis.in
The live camera feed was not available. Even when it is available, it is not accurate.
When BTIS started, police errected lot of sensors on many roads. They are all left as scrap, and now replaced by cameras. Not sure, how effective these cameras are.
They are not being useful for people.
Please make the existing systems effective, then there is always scope for improvement by learning from other countries.

Anonymous said...

I think this is a great idea. Singapore went through same pains of traffic management during Asian economy boom.

However right officers with enough Information Tech knowledge are selected for this training and it is important they are given some time to provide an action plan on their return. Many govt training plans fail when trained officers are shunted out to some unrelated posting later.

Shrinidhi Hande said...

Like they do in Singapore,
will our police ever be able to arrest those who spit on road side(or damage public properties in any other way) and fine then heavily?